A busy summer for the Office for Open Research

21 Sep 2022

We thought that it was timely to update Library staff on the operational activities of the Office for Open Research (OOR) and the work that the team has been involved in over the summer.

The OOR chaired the first meeting of the Open Research Service Partnership in August; bringing together key research partners from across the University and creating a single point of contact for open research support at Manchester. 

Through the Open Research Accelerator Fund, the OOR has been able to support nine open research projects drawn from across our research community totalling £19,000. We were encouraged by the range of applications across all three faculties highlighting the diversity of the open research movement. We are confident the fund will develop open research practice and skills across the University. 

The Office has also been championing and showcasing open research practice at the University through a range of case studies. Each case study has been written up and an accompanying video has been created, all of which have been shared on our website. 

The Open Research Digest has been launched; a monthly subscription-based newsletter providing the latest news about open research, both in terms of the global open research landscape and work being undertaken at the University. Staff can sign up to the newsletter to receive it in their inbox every month. Look out for the next edition of the newsletter released on 3rd October detailing all the work of the OOR to date. 

What’s next? 

Currently the OOR is working on business cases for five projects which we hope will shape the open research landscape at the University over the coming years. These include developing an open research indicator framework to track the adoption of open research practice at the University, developing open research skills training resources and creating an institutional open software policy. 

We’re excited to share more about this work in the next few months.